If you’ve ever asked yourself: “Is it harder to buy booze [in PA] than anywhere else in nation?” The answer is a loud yes. There are 618 state-run stores in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. To put that number in perspective, there are more wine and spirits stores in the city of Chicago than there are in our entire state, despite Pennsylvania having four times as many people. A recent paper by two Wharton professors says Pennsylvania has the fewest liquor retailers per person than any state in the nation. We even have fewer stores today than we did in 2006.
Pennsylvanians love a stiff drink just as much as the next patriot—the National Institutes for Health says the average Quaker Stater drinks 2.2 gallons of alcohol each year, only slightly less than the national average of 2.3 gallons. So why on earth does Pennsylvania have so few places to buy a bottle? Well, it’s not a matter of taste. The simple truth is our government wanted it that way … in 1933.
When Prohibition was repealed, state lawmakers scrambled to write their own restrictive laws on alcohol. Like many others, Pennsylvania adopted a strict control system, in which the state retained the sole right to retail wines and spirits. The legislature passed a paternalistic liquor code (still on the books largely unchanged) that openly declared its intent to “prohibit forever the open saloon.” It also created the LCB as a civil agency responsible for both enforcing the code and selling liquor for profit (two responsibilities seemingly at odds with one another).
Over time, most states abandoned or reformed these monopolies. Harrisburg never did. Today, several states including Pennsylvania and Utah have monopolies that remain, but even Utah doesn’t use our quirky state-store setup.
“PA’s Disgraceful Liquor Laws,” Philadelphia Weekly (via Seen Through a Glass) (via cynthiacloskey)